Working Mothers and Gender Inequality in Caregiving
Working mothers are heavily invested in two big aspects of their lives. The first being their family, nothing is more important to a working mother than the wellbeing and care for their child. The second, working to support their child and to try to be as financially stable as one can be in hard times of living expenses and the actual coast of raising a child. So, what happens when a child is sick at school and both working parents (or in the case of one parent families the single parent) are busy providing for their child, that they cannot escape work to pick them up? I look to understand more about what are the working mother’s inequality of finding while working, as it is usually the mothers burden to leave work to care for that child.
The “children penalty” has been a big factor in women in the workforce’s participation levels. The problem is not simply some women seeing reduced yearly incomes and lower hours on the job, many women are actually struggling to even return to work post child. These women miss out on opportunities for promotions and bigger earnings, as opposed to their male counterparts. Pew research shows that in 2013, about 10% of highly educated (master's degree or higher) women were staying at home full time to take care of their children (Livingston, G. 2014, May 07). This number may not seem like much, yet out of the women surveyed, 71% of mothers worked outside the home, 29% stayed at home and out of that number roughly 4% were what are termed as “opted out moms”. Opted out moms are women who are highly educated, high-achieving women who seemingly chose to “opt out” of work after becoming a mother. Most of the recent growth in stay-at-home moms has been from less educated women. The Pew research suggests "One of the possible causes for the large gender inequality could be the impact of getting children on the division of household roles. This could reflect in lacking affordable childcare service in a country. For instance, in Scandinavian countries childcare services can be seen as part of the social benefit system and childcare facilities are available and affordable for everyone. The women’s participation rates of these countries are among the highest in the EU” (Verwaal, M. and Berden, K. 2009).
(Source: https://www.ecorys.com/sites/default/files/files/Pillar%204%20CD17500%20-%20childcare-gender%20equality-economic%20growth.pdf.)
My main research is focused on North America and the problems mothers are facing in British Columbia with childcare. Yet, I felt it was necessary to look briefly into research regarding European countries, due to the similarities we have as western cultures and to give a different perspective outside Canada. The data in the above graph shows the female participation rates in the labor markets in EU countries both in 2000 and 2008. What is known as the Lisbon target is what was decided by EU members in 2000 to obtain certain goals, some pertaining to employment. “These targets of the Lisbon Agenda are directly reflected in the participation rates the Member States needs to achieve by the end of 2010. The targets were very ambitious and the goals were set at a 10%-point increase of the total employment rate. The Lisbon Agenda recognized that differences between men and women participating on the labor market were large, and that if this gender gap could be reduced, by getting more women to participate, this would be positive… Furthermore, a high female participation rate is desirable, because it could lead to a higher level of welfare.” (Verwaal, M. and Berden, K. 2009). The target value that was set was aiming for female participation rates to be around 60% across the board. By 2008, most EU countries this was either already obtained (such as in countries like Denmark, Russia and the United Kingdom), or were close to achieving (such as in countries like Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Belgium). Certain countries had a long way to go, like in Malta which was around 37% participation levels in 2008. These numbers and the Lisbon target suggest that these European Union countries are focused on having an equal work force between the two genders one day in the future and are understanding of women in the workforce not necessarily getting those big-time jobs that are so common for men, but to at least be able to be working in some capacity.
In the United States, low income families had in the past used public assistance programs, which was defined as government programs that seek to provide aid to certain classes of individuals who are poor, “as a fallback to attend to family needs because they did not have access to the resources that higher-income families use, such as savings from previous employment, spousal income adequate to support a family, or access to family wealth.” (Dobson, 2007). In the US welfare reform eventually happened in 2009 stating that the government wanted to increase parental responsibility by amending child support laws, so in turn low-wage mothers were no longer able to choose between work and the needs of their children and family, “Even a lack of childcare no longer justified absence from work, although publicly funded childcare served only a fraction of all eligible families “(Mezey et al. 2002). This change in welfare brought many women to have to work whenever and wherever possible to be able to make ends meet for both them and their child. Finding childcare for a working mother was also tough due to the now larger demand for childcare during the day, that shortages in good childcare were happening more often than anticipated.
Mothers are looking for jobs that should provide them the ability to take care of their children at the drop of a hat. However, when work does not allow this, a mother would typically choose taking care of their child over working every time. In doing this, the working mothers are facing restraints at work due to working behavior norms that simply do not allow people to come and go from work as they please. What this means is that there is a cost-benefit restraint that shows women are now having employment constraints simply for being a devoted parent. In the article “Wage Poor Mothers and Moral Economy” author Lisa Dobson (2007) suggests that wage-poor mothers are choosing what she states is "moral economy" where the women’s jobs should be able to provide a lifestyle that allows the women to take care of their families at any time. Simply, if jobs do not allow women to leave when their family needs them, a mother will always choose her children over a job. When this is done, the mothers are challenging contemporary US economic norms of proper suggested work behavior. Wage poor mothers have limited options when it comes to financially helping their family. Many families can be welfare reliant/post reliant and these families Dobson looked at in her research, were constantly trying anything possible to get by on such a low income they would try to supplement their costs to cover basic bills by applying for public programs like food stamps, housing subsidies, and Medicaid for health insurance in the US. The low monthly payment that welfare provides is not enough to subsidize a family so many parents rely on other supplemental resources such as: their partners and kin to help support; they may take on informal work as a side hustle, they made trade goods and services to others; and finally, try to maximize as much public benefits the government can give them to make ends meet. When it comes to childcare, wage poor women want the best for their children, just like higher wage mothers. However, when getting child care is hard in the first-place wage poor mothers cannot be too picky even if they want to be. Dobson (2007) explains mother’s problems when it comes to the state of childcare they are receiving, she states “Almost half of the mothers interviewed mentioned that at times their children had been (or were currently) in poor care arrangements generally due to overcrowding, disturbing incidents that had occurred, questionable caregivers, or lack of control over their children's care needs.” Through her research, it was clear that mothers are the ones taking on the job of finding the safest childcare for their children and in many instances, the wage poor mothers were not happy with their current arrangement. Many of the mothers who were studied actually referred to themselves as being depressed and angry at their current childcare problems.
So why are jobs antichildren? Well it’s not exactly that simple. Jobs are supposed to be equally fair to all employees, but, when it comes down to bringing a child to work because you cannot find someone to take of the child, jobs can only be so patient. A problem facing people who live in Vancouver, most big jobs are downtown. Inevitably, younger generations flock downtown to go and get these big-time jobs. This is taking away jobs from current families and their support networks, meaning there is less people to rely on childcare in the city itself. Childcare and rent in the city is so expensive and scarce, that I cannot even fathom how a couple that are both working full time are able to pay their bills, on top of having a child and paying for a rental/purchasing a home. Rental properties in the city are no longer designed to be affordable for couples in which there is only one breadwinner (usually the male), either.
Sheryl Sandberg writes in her book “Lean In” (2016) that women who take time out of the workforce pay a “career penalty”, she states that "Only 74% of professional women will rejoin the workforce in any capacity, and 40% will return to full time jobs." These numbers surprise me that they are this high. She argues further that the career penalty could see as much as 20% decrease in wage, due to factors such as education and hours worked if they have been out of the workforce for one year. So not only are women not coming back after having children, but if they do they are getting paid less for doing the same job.
Statistics reported that the time spent on unpaid child care between parents is not surprisingly, an unequal responsibility. Regardless of whether women have paid employment, are lone parents or are part of a dual parent family, women are spending approximately double the hours as men are doing in regards to their own child’s care each week. Roughly, women are spending 50+ hours each week caring for their child. This number then increased to approximately 67.5 hours per week for children under the age of five (Milan et al. 2011).
The current state of childcare in British Columbia is seen as a shortage of regulated care, which is already too expensive for many families. The system in turn is seen as failing women and children in the province (Milne, K. 2016, July). In Vancouver, a company called West Coast Leaf, who deal with women’s legal education and action funding came out with a report in 2016. This report goes over women’s inequality and the human rights of individual women and children. They argue six key points that may violate women’s rights that are currently happening. The first being economic security, “many women may be unable to enter the paid work force because they are unable to secure care for their children or, if they can secure employment, they may take part-time or precarious work in order to balance work with caregiving or reduce the cost of child care. The economic insecurity that results can trap women in cycles of poverty and financial crisis, and can lead to forced financial dependence, which undermines women’s equality (Milne, K. 2016, July). This makes sense, due to childcare problems in the province women need to find someone to take care of their child if they want to have a full-time job to support themselves, if not, part time work may be an option but only if they can make ends meet another way. The second point is women’s safety. Their finding suggested that due to financial dependence to keep a family afloat, there was a high risk for women staying in relationships that were violent, which in turn, creates blockages to both the women and child’s overall safety. When women are able to leave an abusive relationship with their child, they still are likely to be stuck in the cycle of poverty that happens when one is a single parent without a stable job and little to no childcare. The third point was on the potential immigration status of the mother in Canada. As for some women in Vancouver, access to child care services in the province may be harder on women without legal immigration status who have fled from a different country. The fourth point concerns mothers with disabilities. These women experience certain barriers to becoming gainfully employed. With higher rates of part time employment which then makes financial security and parenting overall much more difficult. Next, the right to parent, West Coast Leaf believed that there was major importance on the relationship between parent and child, and a parent’s choice to make decisions in the lives of their children. “A lack of access to affordable child care services can undermine these rights by constraining parental decisions and putting families at risk of separation through the child protection system.” (Milne, K. 2016, July). Finally, children’s rights were the last key point in women’s inequality with childcare. The Access to good quality/affordable childcare can have a drastic impact on the well-being of a child. When a child cannot access good quality child care, it can have major deficits on the child growing up. These key points bring about ideas not necessarily thought of when talking about women caregiving. There are so many different factors that can happen to women with children, that these six key points are broader terms that many mothers can relate to in some degree.
Working mothers who have children have the burden more likely than their partner (if there is indeed a partner) of taking care of their child, while working a job to support their family. For many, coming back to the workforce does not seem as likely once having a child due to factors such as: having a hard time finding appropriate and affordable childcare, gap in salary, the need to put their family first and jobs not agreeing, or the lack of overall desire to come back in general. Working mothers are seen as a “bad parent” for working full time and having sitters, and yet, are seen as “lazy” when they do stay home instead of working. For them, being a mother is the hardest job, and yet pleasing society is just as strong.